Tuesday, November 30, 2010
NEWS
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Tehran admits cyber World scrambles to deal attack on nuke plants with WikiLeaks fallout Iran ready to enter talks with P5+1 powers on Dec 5 TEHRAN: Iran admitted yesterday that its controversial uranium enrichment centrifuges had been affected by a malicious computer virus, as reported by Western diplomats last week. Hours earlier, car bombs killed a top Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran and wounded another. Both events may color a resumption of talks on nuclear issues next week with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a news conference Iran would attend the talks on Dec 5, but restated its position that its uranium enrichment program, which it says is purely for power generation, was not negotiable. Major Western powers as well as Israel and Russia have become increasingly concerned that Iran’s program may soon give it the capacity to build and launch a nuclear bomb, despite four rounds of UN sanctions. Israel and the United States have not ruled out pre-emptive military strikes. But the emergence of Stuxnet, which some experts believe was aimed specifically at Iran’s nuclear installations, shows Tehran’s foes may no longer be restricted to conventional diplomatic and military options. CENTRIFUGE PROBLEMS Ahmadinejad did not specify whether he was referring to the Stuxnet virus identified by Western security experts, but said: “They
succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts. But the problem has been resolved.” International talks on Iran’s nuclear program have made little or no progress and been stalled for more than a year. Russia’s RIA news agency quoted Iran’s ambassador to Moscow as saying the latest round would be held in Geneva. Ahmadinejad said Iran was ready to discuss nuclear cooperation and international problems, but not enrichment. “The complete enrichment cycle and the production of fuel are basic rights of (IAEA) member states and are non-negotiable,” Ahmadinejad said. A senior Western diplomat in Tehran whose country is involved in the talks said no major breakthrough was expected. “Iran has always tried to evade pressure by expressing its readiness for talks. But we want to discuss sensitive issues like enrichment,” the diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Pressure has been increasing on Iran since the discovery last year of a hitherto undeclared underground enrichment site under construction near Qom. SPY ARRESTS In the past few months it has arrested a number of alleged nuclear spies, warning citizens against leaking information to foreign secret services. Iran’s top nuclear offi-
cial, Ali Akbar Salehi, said the scientist killed in Tehran yesterday, Majid Shahriyari, had had a role in Iran’s biggest nuclear projects, but gave no further details. The scientist injured by a separate bomb in Tehran, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, is personally subject to UN sanctions because of alleged involvement in nuclear weapons research. The state news agency IRNA said motorcyclists had approached both scientists as they drove to work and attached bombs to the outside of their cars before riding off. Both men’s wives were injured. Another nuclear scientist, Massoud AliMohammadi, was killed in Tehran by a remote-controlled bomb in January. Western security sources said at the time that he had worked closely with Abbasi-Davani. Ahmadinejad blamed the attacks on Iran’s enemy Israel and its Western allies. He also dismissed as “mischief” news reports based on secret US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks indicating that many of Iran’s Arab neighbours had pressed for a US strike against its nuclear program. “Regional countries are all friends with each other. Such mischief will have no impact on the relations of countries,” he said. “Some part of the American government produced these documents. We don’t think this information was leaked. We think it was organized to be released on a regular basis, and they are pursuing political goals.” — Reuters
Wikileaks expose hidden Gulf views on Iran Continued from Page 1 “These revelations show that the Gulf Arab region is concentrating on Iran to the level that we want a war with Iran,” said Sami AlFaraj, head of the Kuwait Centre for Strategic Studies. Analysts say the Gulf rulers’ desire for military action against Iran could add to wider SunniShiite tensions and undermine Saudi Arabia’s efforts to mediate with Iran to
ease sectarian tensions in Iraq and Lebanon. “It depends how people receive this. If they play it up and manipulate it, in terms of Sunni-Shiite relations it could find some fertile ground,” Shaikh said. “But in terms of policy I don’t think it’s going to have great impact-they are dominated by other interests,” he added, echoing comments by Dakhil who saw limited implications. Animosity between Sunnis and Shiite goes back to a cen-
turies-old religious schism that still poisons relations. Hardline Sunnis regard Shiites as “rejectionists” who strayed from true Islam. Until recently Gulf states banned Shiites from performing religious rituals in public. In some countries they are denied government and security jobs. No Gulf Arab government has commented on the Gulf leaks, which had on Monday not been widely covered by local media. — Reuters
Op-ed by US Ambassador Continued from Page 1 do not represent a government’s official foreign policy. In the United States, they are one element out of many that shape our policies, which are ultimately set by the President and the Secretary of State. And those policies are a matter of public record, the subject of thousands of pages of speeches, statements, white papers, and other documents that the State Department makes freely available online and elsewhere. But relations between governments are not the only concern. US diplomats meet with local human rights workers, journalists, religious leaders, and others outside the government who offer their own candid insights. These conversations depend on trust and confidence as well.
The owners of the WikiLeaks website claim to possess some 250,000 classified documents, many of which have been released to the media. Whatever their motives are in publishing these documents, it is clear that releasing them poses real risks to real people, and often to particular people who have dedicated their lives to protecting others. An act intended to provoke the powerful may instead imperil the powerless. We support and are willing to have genuine debates about pressing questions of public policy. But releasing documents carelessly and without regard for the consequences is not the way to start such a debate. For our part, the US government is committed to maintaining the security of our diplomatic communications and is taking steps to make sure
they are kept in confidence. We are moving aggressively to make sure this kind of breach does not happen again. We continue to look to Kuwait to remain one of our principal friends, allies, and partners in this region, as one of our leading interlocutors on regional issues, as a country whose counsel we seek as we endeavor to contribute meaningfully to the development of regional solutions for regional problems. We cannot afford anything less. The Embassy is in close contact with Ministry of Foreign Affairs interlocutors to make sure we continue to focus on the issues and tasks at hand. President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and I remain committed to being trusted partners as we seek to build a better, more prosperous world for everyone.
Blasts kill Iran nuke scientist Continued from Page 1 blood of university professor Dr Majid Shahriari to curb Iran’s progress,” the office of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a statement posted on its website. Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said the “Mossad and the CIA are the enemies of Iranians” whose “desperate terrorist act against the two academics shows their weakness and inferiority.” Israel’s foreign ministry declined to comment on the reports. Shahriari was “in charge of one of the great projects” at Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, the Islamic republic’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA. He was also a member of the so-called SESAME project on nuclear cooperation in the Middle East. The other scientist, Abbasi Davani, was targeted by UN Security Council sanctions under Resolution 1747 adopted in March 2007. He was identified as a senior defense ministry and armed forces logistics scientist. The 52-year-old
was “one of the few specialists who can separate isotopes,” and has been a member of the elite Revolutionary Guards since the 1979 Islamic revolution, one report said. “The two were cooperating with the defense ministry in the field of nuclear research. Shahriari was the head of a project that sought to achieve the technology to design nuclear reactor core,” said the hardline Rajanews website. The police chief said the assailants had managed to escape and that “nobody had yet claimed responsibility” for the attacks. In January, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, another Iranian nuclear scientist involved with the SESAME project, was killed in a bomb attack which Tehran blamed on “mercenaries” in the pay of Israel and the United States. Salehi warned “enemies” of Iran they were “playing with fire” in reaction to the assassination. The latest attacks came a day after the top US military officer said the United States was weighing military options in the face of Tehran’s announcement it had an
atomic power plant up and running. “We’ve actually been thinking about military options for a significant period of time,” Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff said in an interview with CNN. Mullen said he doesn’t believe that Iran’s nuclear plant is for civilian use “for a second.” “In fact, the information and intelligence that I’ve seen speak very specifically to the contrary. Iran is still very much on a path to be able to develop nuclear weapons, including weaponizing them, putting them on a missile and being able to use them,” he said. On Saturday, Iran said its first atomic power plant built by Russia in the southern city of Bushehr had begun operations, ahead of a new round of talks with Western powers over the country’s controversial nuclear drive. And in July, Iranian nuclear researcher Shahram Amiri said after returning to the Islamic republic that he had been held in the United States for more than a year after being “kidnapped” at gunpoint by two Farsi-speaking CIA agents in the Saudi city of Medina. — AFP
Islamist MPs target women in swimsuits Continued from Page 1 Meanwhile, the National Assembly is set to debate today a crucial request by the public prosecution to lift the immunity of opposition MP Faisal Al-Muslim so he can be interrogated for showing a copy of a cheque issued by the prime minister for a former MP during an assembly session. To be accepted, the request must be approved by a majority vote in the assembly in which all cabinet ministers can participate. A large majority of lawmakers are set to oppose the request on the grounds that it breaches the constitution which guarantees the freedom of expression for MPs under the assembly chamber. Based on an unconfirmed account, close to 40 out of the 50-member house are expected to oppose the request which was described by opposition MPs as an attempt to undermine the status of the 1962 constitution and an attempt to prevent MPs from freely expressing their opinions under the assembly chamber. A group of former MPs, writers and academics issued a statement yesterday call-
ing on MPs to firmly reject the public prosecution request, saying that lifting the immunity amounts to undermining the status of the constitution. The statement said that lifting the immunity means scrapping the supervisory powers of the national assembly which is a key part of the constitution. They also stressed that the aim of the move is to silence other MPs from exercising their roles under the constitution. The lawsuit against MP Muslim was filed by Burgan Bank which claimed its interests have been harmed when Muslim showed a copy of the premier’s cheque which was issued through the bank. The debate over the request is expected to be very tense with many MPs expected to attack the government. In another development, the National Assembly financial and economic affairs committee yesterday discussed a government-sponsored draft law for combating money laundering and terror funding, rapporteur of the panel said. MP Abdulrahman Al-Anjari said that the committee decided to return the bill to the
government to separate it into two bills, one dealing with money laundering and the other tackling terror funding. Anjari said that committee members found no objection to the money laundering bill but added that they rejected parts of the terror funding bill since there is no clear definition for terrorism. He said terror definition could differ from a country to another, where in some countries what is seen as terror funding could be seen as charity donations in others. Anjari said the committee received a note from Islamist MP Khaled Al-Sultan saying that certain articles of the terror funding bill in fact violate the constitution. Meanwhile, a number of MPs criticized Municipality Minister Fadhel Safar for forcing three senior Kuwaiti legal advisors to go on retirement in violation of the law which allows them to continue in their jobs until the age of 70. MPs were speaking to a number of lawyers at the legal department of the municipality who staged a protest sit-in at the national assembly yesterday in support of their colleagues.
Israel feels ‘vindicated’ PARIS: Governments worldwide scrambled yesterday to head off damage from a flood of leaked US diplomatic cables revealing secret details and indiscreet asides on some of the world’s most tense international crises. Despite diplomats’ red faces, officials were quick to criticize the release of the confidential missives, most of which date from 2007 to February this year, and to stress that the leaks would not harm relations. Highlights include a call by Saudi King Abdullah for the US to “cut off the head” of the Iranian snake over its nuclear program and leaked memos about a Chinese government bid to hack into Google. The more than 200,000 cables were given to journalists from five Western publications several weeks ago and are being released on the web in stages over the coming weeks, with many governments still braced for the worst. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose policies are the subject of many of the memos, dismissed them as “worthless” and “mischief” which would not affect Tehran’s relations with its Arab neighbors. Britain said it would continue to work closely with the US despite the upcoming release of unflattering US memos about Prime Minister David Cameron. British newspaper The Guardian, one of those media selected to preview the documents, said that upcoming memos give “embarrassing” US views of Cameron and “weak” ex-leader Gordon Brown. Cameron’s spokesman said leaks were “inhibiting the conduct of governments.” WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange described the release as a “diplomatic history of the United States” covering “every major issue.” Despite a cyber attack that took down its main website Sunday, WikiLeaks started publishing 251,287 cables - 15,652 of which are classified “secret”-from 274 US embassies around the world on http://cablegate.wikileaks.org. US officials had raced to contain the diplomatic fallout by warning more than a dozen governments of the impending leaks, but Washington refused to negotiate with WikiLeaks, saying it had obtained the cables illegally. Afghanistan insisted its relations with the US would not be affected by cables portraying
RIYADH: In this file photo, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (left) shakes hands with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah as Crown Prince Sultan (right) looks on at Riyadh airport. The classified diplomatic cables released by online whistle-blower WikiLeaks and reported by the London Guardian said some cables showed King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia repeatedly urging the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear program. — AP President Hamid Karzai as weak and paranoid, and his brother as a corrupt drugs baron. “We don’t see anything substantive in the document that will strain the relationship,” Karzai’s spokesman Waheed Omer told reporters, adding: “We’ll wait and see what else comes out before making further comment.” US diplomats described Karzai in the documents as “driven by paranoia” and “conspiracy theories”. Russia likewise tried to play down US diplomats’ reported assessment of the country as “a virtual mafia state” that is ruled by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and not the president. “There is nothing new or deserving a comment in these publication,” Kremlin spokeswoman Yulia Timakov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. “Our own diplomats are sometimes just as open in their own private messages to each other,” an unidentified Kremlin official told the Kommersant business daily. Israel emerged as a surprising beneficiary, with senior officials saying that they vindicated the Jewish state’s position as they exposed widespread Arab concern
over Iran’s nuclear program. “I don’t think Israel was harmed at all,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, although one document quoted him as saying while in opposition in 2007 that he would “never allow a single Palestinian refugee to return to Israel.” And in the US itself, the government ordered a sweeping review of information security across federal agencies, saying the inflammatory and sometimes embarrassing revelations had damaged national security. “Any failure by agencies to safeguard classified information... is unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Jacob Lew, said. The Guardian said all five papers had decided “neither to ‘dump’ the entire dataset into the public domain, nor to publish names that would endanger innocent individuals.” US officials have not confirmed the source of the leaks, but suspicion has fallen on Bradley Manning, a former army intelligence analyst arrested after the release of a video showing air strikes that killed
reporters in Iraq. WikiLeaks argues that the first two document dumps-nearly 500,000 US military incident reports from 2004 to 2009 - shed light on abuses during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meanwhile, the newly leaked US diplomatic cables also say that Iranian Red Crescent ambulances were used to smuggle weapons to Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group during its 2006 war with Israel. The cables say that the IRC shipments of medical supplies “served also to facilitate weapons shipments.” Hezbollah and Israel fought a 34-day war that killed 1,200 Lebanese and 160 Israelis. The release of more than 250,000 classified State Department documents occurred this week by online whistleblower WikiLeaks. According to one of the cables, a person whose name was not published “had seen missiles in the planes destined for Lebanon when delivering medical supplies to the plane.” Iran allegedly funds the militant group to the tune of millions of dollars a year and is suspected of supplying much of its arsenal. — Agencies
Scottish airports hit as UK shivers in cold snap LONDON: Britain shivered yesterday as an unseasonal cold snap gripped the kingdom, with temperatures below freezing and snow flurries trapping hundreds of motorists and causing travel chaos. Snow played havoc with Scottish airports with the country’s busiest, Edinburgh, shut until at least 1400 GMT, while Glasgow reopened following a closure and Aberdeen was open but its runways had to be cleared. Amid the earliest widespread British winter snowfall since 1993, the chilliest spot was in Scotland, with an overnight low of minus 16.1 degrees Celsius reached in Altnaharra in the northern Highlands. The BBC reported that hundreds of motorists had been trapped in their cars in Scotland, with a rest centre set up in Perth to assist more than 650 people who had
been stranded overnight. Llysdinam, which saw Wales’s coldest ever November reading on Sunday at minus 18C, was a bit warmer overnight at minus 12.9C. The weather was forecast to worsen with snow spreading inland and some temperatures plunging as low as minus 20C, forecasters warned. The unusual weather has been caused by high pressure over Greenland and low pressure in the Baltic, forcing cold winds from the north-east across Europe. Britain’s Met Office national weather service issued severe weather warnings for the country’s eastern flank, saying snow showers would continue to affect many parts. Northeast England was among the regions blanketed in snow, with the landmark “Angel of the North” sculpture outside Newcastle spreading its wings over
picture postcard wintry scenes. English Premier League football side Chelsea were forced to take a seven-hour coach ride back to London on Sunday following their 1-1 draw at Newcastle after disruption to their planned flight home. The weather has disrupted several sporting events-Dundee United’s Scottish Premier League match against champions Rangers was cancelled. Hundreds of schools were closed nationwide. A number of roads in Northern Ireland’s second city Londonderry went untreated after thugs smashed the windows of salt gritting trucks. The bitterly cold weather caught out two suspected thieves in Leigh, northwest England, after police followed a trail of frozen water which dripped from a stolen boiler. — AFP
Investment Dar committee quits Continued from Page 1 The company, which along with a majority stake in the British automaker also owns the Grosvenor House Apartments in London and other banking and property investments - launched its restructuring plan last year. It has said it gained the support of more than 80 percent of its banks and investors. “Despite
the residual effects of the wider financial crisis, TID continues to maintain a strong and solid asset base and the Board views this proposal as an overt opportunist attempt by members of the CC to attempt to assume control of TID’s assets, motivated by individual greed,” TID said. It accused some members of the committee of acting on “personal and destructive agendas which are not repre-
sentative of the principles of their appointment or representative of the interests of TID’s banks and investors.” TID said in May it was in default on a $100 million Islamic bond. In March, it sought state legal protection stemming from its debts. TID said it will appoint a new coordinating committee and, meanwhile, will work directly with banks and investors. — AP
Kuwait to spend $90 billion on oil projects Continued from Page 1 opposition lawmakers that its tendering did not go through the proper legal channels. Faruq Al-Zanqi, the CEO of the national oil company KPC, told reporters yesterday that he is hopeful the two projects will be tendered and awarded in 2011. He said KPC is waiting for the Supreme Petroleum Council, the highest oil decision-making body, to meet and take a favorable decision on the two projects, insisting Kuwait needed them. After completing the two projects, Kuwait plans to shut down Shuaiba refinery, one of three refineries in the country with a total capacity output of 930,000 bpd. And when the two projects are operational,
Kuwait will have a refining capacity at 1.4 million bpd. Kuwait’s expenditure plan in the oil sector which supplies 90 percent of public income, envisages raising oil output capacity to 3.5 million barrels of oil per day by 2015 from 3.1 million bpd currently, Refaai said. The ultimate goal of Kuwait’s longterm strategy is to raise its output capacity to four million bpd by 2020 and sustain that until 2030, Refaai, who is also chairman of Oil Development Company, said. The chairman of Kuwait Oil Co (KOC), a KPC subsidiary responsible for exploration and production, Sami Al-Rasheed, told the conference the company expects to spend $25 billion over the next five years on projects. Rasheed said KOC aims to raise its crude output to 3.65 mil-
lion bpd by 2020 from around three million bpd now. The remaining 350,000 bpd will come from the divided zone with Saudi Arabia. KOC also plans to raise natural gas production, both associated and non-associated, to around 4.5 billion cubic feet daily by 2030. Kuwait currently produces one billion cubic feet of associated gas and around 140 million cubic feet of nonassociated gas daily. KPC transport subsidiary, Kuwait Oil Tanker Co (KOTC) will account for $1.6 billion to modernize the Kuwaiti oil fleet by ordering six new modern tankers by 2015, Refaai said. Kuwait, OPEC’s fifth largest producer, says it sits on 10 percent of the world’s proven crude reserves and is pumping 2.3 million bpd. — AFP